Una perspectiva que despierta cada vez mayor interés por parte de administradores públicos, políticos y analistas es el de las llamadas políticas públicas. Se trata de un camino relativamente nuevo, que permite, por una parte, observar y analizar los asuntos públicos desde un ángulo singular vinculado a la transformación de la acción gubernamental y, por otra, idear mecanismos para atender o dar respuesta a lo que se percibe como problemas de orden público. Como es sabido, los problemas públicos son complejos y multideterminados. Su análisis requiere de herramientas que van más allá de lo que comúnmente ofrecen disciplinas como la sociología, la economía, la ciencia política, la administración pública o la psicología por sí solas. De hecho, lo que busca la “ciencia de las políticas”, como la bautizó uno de sus padres fundadores, Harold Laswell (1992: 105), es integrar los conocimientos provenientes de diversas disciplinas bajo un enfoque cuyo objetivo es advertir y “solucionar” problemas. Recientemente, el académico británico Wayne Parsons se ha dado a la tarea de reunir en una sola publicación los aspectos más relevantes del conocimiento que se ha producido alrededor de las políticas públicas. Bajo el título Public Policy: An Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Policy Analysis, Parsons da cuenta de los temas y debates teóricos centrales de este enfoque, además de aportar múltiples referentes bibliográficos y detalles sobre estudios de caso que ilustran la riqueza de las políticas públicas, pues muestran no sólo cómo se aplican sino, sobre todo, qué explicaciones y respuestas pueden brindar. A ello se suma uno de los rasgos más valiosos del libro: poner en claro los dos ángulos de las políticas públicas que, con frecuencia, son ignorados en la bibliografía sobre la materia, a saber: el análisis del proceso de las políticas, por una parte y, por la otra, el análisis en y para el proceso de políticas, o, lo que es lo mismo, el uso del conocimiento y técnicas analíticas para el diseño, implementación y evaluación de las políticas públicas. Aunque ambos están intrínsecamente ligados, su especificidad determina su naturaleza y fin. Mientras el análisis del proceso de las políticas tiene fines

Public Policy: An Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Policy Analysis

Hugh Heclo, "Issue Networks and the Executive Establishment"

Evidence Argument And Persuasion In The Policy Process

The American People and Foreign Policy

Since renewable energy has the paramount importance of achieving environmental sustainability, developing countries like Pakistan have been facing numerous renewable energy generation (REG) development challenges. Thus, the REG development in any country can be attributed to its crucial drivers as well as crucial barriers. This work aims to identify crucial influence factors of REG development by conducting multi-facet content analysis as well as partial least square–based structural equation modeling analysis on data collected through a questionnaire survey. It has been conducted based on academicians from four Pakistani universities as well as professionals from Islamabad Electric Supply Company. The key outcomes are as follows: First, through multi-facet content analysis, ten crucial influence factors are identified. Among those factors, lack of good governance, renewable energy adaptation, and governmental energy policies are revealed to be the crucial barriers to REG development, whereas endowed resources, power production approach, renewable energy demand, investment environment for renewable energy projects, economic returns of renewable energy projects, environmental effects, and public acceptance are found to be the crucial drivers of REG development. Based on relative significance, the lack of good governance is unveiled to be the most significant factor, while environmental effects is found to be the least significant one. Moreover, among the drivers of REG development, public acceptance is found to be the prime contributor. At the same time, among crucial barriers, lack of good governance has shown the largest contribution to REG development.

Factors influencing renewable energy generation development: a way to environmental sustainability.

In order to have a bigger impact on European Union public policy processes, national interest groups might choose to pursue a ‘dual strategy’ and promote their interests before national and...

Entering the Brussels arena: Slovenian interest groups and the pursuit of a dual strategy

A condition for the existence of democratic society is a mechanism for citizens to have an effective political voice. While political parties provide a key channel for expressing views and preferences, organized interests provide another important mechanism for such representation. A valid question in this regard is whether the system of interest groups is capable of ensuring the representation of a variety of public and private interests. Addressing this conundrum requires data that maps the essential traits of the population of organized interests—its density and diversity in a given country. The focus to date has primarily been on Western Democracies (with a few exceptions) and other systems remain unexplored. This chapter addresses a discussion of an operational definition of interest organizations as used in the existing interest group research. The main focus of the chapter is to explore the density and composition of the Lithuanian, Polish and Slovenian systems of organized interests, looking at the characteristics of interest groups’ populations in three post-Communist and relatively young democracies. The previously unexplored system-level approach delivers important insights into the nature of the Lithuanian, Polish and Slovenian interest group systems, as well as providing a framework for subsequent work conceptualizing advocacy activities or lobbying dynamics in specific policy domains.

Interest Organizations in Central and Eastern Europe: Evaluating Population Ecology

The development of organised interests (OIs) during the socialist period in Central and Eastern Europe was considerably limited, if not frozen. This was also somewhat the case in Slovenia, where it was mainly OIs close to the government that could operate. In the early 1990s, the interest group system in the now independent country was already recognised as vibrant with the number of OIs growing each year ever since. Yet, Europeanisation processes in particular have led to additional opportunity structures being created for OIs to become involved in policymaking. The biggest obstacle to the development of such interests has become the low level of its professionalisation, given that most are run voluntarily. Around the end of 2020, the political environment for the activities of OIs remained quite favourable, with a few isolated drops in their public image and political attacks on mostly environmental organisations. The change in government in March 2020 saw the backsliding in democracy become more apparent. This included liberal OIs being publicly discredited, the obstruction of largely environmental OIs, and attacks on the media. In this article, we examine how democratic backsliding in Slovenia has affected the articulation, representation, and intermediation of interests. To unravel this puzzle, we analyse the changing conditions for OIs’ operations between March 2020 and April 2022 as introduced by the populist right-wing Slovenian government to help better understand the democratic backsliding seen in the country.

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Challenges Facing Organised Interests Under a Populist Right-Wing Government in Slovenia

This chapter investigates developments in the nongovernmental sector in Lithuania, Poland and Slovenia. Firstly, historical data on the population of NGOs is presented. Later, the focus is on a ‘mushrooming’ of NGOs after 1989 with the comparative survey data as source. In the final part of the chapter a case study from each country is presented. This chapter argues that despite the differences between countries, the developmental paths are quite similar. A further interesting finding is that NGOs in the countries of interest do not necessarily rely on subsidies from governments or funds from the European Union but focus instead on membership fees and donations.

Meta Novak

Papers

Entering the Brussels arena: Slovenian interest groups and the pursuit of a dual strategy

Interest Organizations in Central and Eastern Europe: Evaluating Population Ecology

Challenges Facing Organised Interests Under a Populist Right-Wing Government in Slovenia

The Organizational Development of Nongovernmental Organizations in Central and Eastern Europe

Party Fragmentation, the Proportional System and Democracy in Slovenia